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BusinessLogic recently scored a marketing coup. The Wall Street Journal selected the company's previously little-known portfolio-management tool, LikeAssets, to handle this chore for its two million subscribers.

The principal benefit for readers of Barron's sister publication is that their account totals and portfolio positions can now be electronically downloaded from brokerages and consolidated in the new portfolio manager. LikeAssets, of course, got a nice boost from the full-page ad announcing the upgraded product in the country's biggest newspaper on March 19.

Under the new system, portfolios get updated as new transactions happen. Users need only provide account IDs and passwords so that secure network connections can be established.

The technology isn't exotic. It's used by rival portfolio managers like Intuit's Mint (mint.com) and SigFig (sigfig.com), and by many banks via software from developers like Yodlee, which also operates the free Yodlee Money Center (moneycenter.yodlee.com) for individual subscribers. Intuit's Quicken software, which originated portfolio downloads three decades ago, also captures mobile-phone transactions through its Mint Website.

Chicago-based BusinessLogic gained its skills in more than 14 years of building portfolio tools for financial-service providers. Its PlanOutcome (planoutcome.com) offers portfolio analysis and asset-allocation advice for clients of money managers like Russell Investments, while its MarketGlide (marketglide.com) provides analytical services for target-date funds. It has spent two years working on its free LikeAssets Website (likeassets.com) to bring similar tools to individuals, says President Dirk Quayle. Its development continues; it's already more fully featured than the Journal version, which is designed for simplicity.

WSJ readers can quickly download their holdings through an electronic connection to any of 50 brokerages with which BusinessLogic has data-sharing agreements. The current list of partners includes the most popular institutions and will expand over time, says Quayle. As is typical of the methodology used, account setup was easy and obvious, and it proceeded without incident.

Beyond quick portfolio setup, though, benefits of the new portfolio manager are primarily in the area of fit and finish. It uses graphs and more color-coded indicators than the Journal's "old" portfolio manager, which is still available. Both WSJ systems provide the same basic holding information, mostly limited to intraday share-price performance. Options and customizability for both the new and old Journal portfolios fall well short of what's available from Quicken, SigFig, or Stock Rover (stockrover.com). Generally, portfolio managers from publications don't match up well with those of the specialized providers.

TO SEE HOW THE system might evolve, WSJ readers need go no further than BusinessLogic's own LikeAssets Website.

The site differs from Stock Rover and others in that it often applies metrics typically used in Modern Portfolio Theory to individual securities. It takes the unusual step of selecting an appropriate exchanged-traded fund to use as an asset-class benchmark for each stock, mutual fund, and exchange-traded product. Then it uses what are, typically, portfolio-oriented measures of performance. For example, LikeAssets will calculate the alpha for each holding. Alpha is a risk-adjusted measure of an investment's excess performance over its benchmark.

LikeAssets' own Website lacks the news and press releases of the Journal version, which focuses on news affecting a user's holdings. But the news is limited to Dow Jones sources, wholesale access to which is already part of a $260-a-year Wall Street Journal (digital only) subscription.

By comparison, the free Stock Rover and SigFig sites also have free content from sources such as Investor's Business Daily (ibd.com) and CNNMoney (money.cnn.com); Dow content is also free.

The WSJ portfolio managers—new or old—may be handy for subscribers to keep watch lists and perform some straightforward tasks. Some combination of the LikeAssets, Stock Rover, and SigFig Website capabilities would seem to offer more functionality for less cost.